The Indigenous Peoples

The Tainos and the Kalinagos

 • SUBSISTENCE FARMERS – the domestication of
plants
• The Tainos were subsistence farmers who grew food mainly
for their own needs and with only a little left over for trade.
ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION OF THE TAINOS -
Their main farming method is called ‘slash and burn
 
OCCUPATIONS
agriculture’. Branches were cut from trees and set on fire.
Then, women used pointed sticks to make holes to plant
crops in the ashes among the blackened tree stumps.
Subsistence farmers,
 

•  After about five to ten years, the soil was exhausted and
Fishermen, Hunters, men cleared fresh land for the women to work on. Some
Tainos used slightly more advanced methods. In Cuba and
Gatherers Hispanolia, irrigation ditches were dug and fields were
fertilised with a mixture of ash and urine.
  Crops • The simple farming methods of the Tainos produced a
produced variety of crops. Maize-Corn- was widely grown in the
Greater Antilles. They cultivated maize by soaking the
seeds in water and planting them in rows.
•  Manioc -cassava- was their main crop. Yocahu was the
god of manioc. Yocahu was the chief Taino god.
Cassava was produced in all of the islands and on the
coast of Guyana, along with sweet potatoes and hot
pepper-chili. Cassava, sweet potatoes, yautia (another
root crop), tania and groundnuts were planted in large
mounds of earth.
•  The Tainos also planted yam, cotton, pineapple and
tobacco. The Tainos knew how to roll the dried leaves
of the tobacco plant, put fire to it and inhale it. The
Tainos grew their crops on plots of land called cunucos
 •  HUNTERS - There were no large wild animals to
hunt but the Tainos trapped many small animals
including snakes, bats, lizards, iguanas, conies and
rabbits and agoutis.
SUBSISTENCE FARMERS- 
the domestication of animals
• They trapped doves by stringing finely woven nets
between trees. They caught parrots by slipping a noose
over their heads. Their method of catching wild ducks
The only domestic animal showed that they were cunning. First they floated
was a small -barkless- dog, grouds downstream until the ducks became used to
which was fattened on seeing gourds, and then the hunter himself would drift
maize meal and eaten as a downstream with a gourd over his head, breathing
delicacy. through a hole and seeing through eye-slits. When he
came upon a bird he would pull it under water by its
legs and drown it. There were other birds that the
Tainos trapped but they are now extinct or very rare.
 GATHERERS • FISHERMEN
  • The Tainos caught and ate various types of fish, shellfish
The Tainos gathered wild fruits. Thus, and the manatee (sea-cow)
they ate fruits such as guava,
pineapple and mammy apple. • Fishermen used nets, hooks, spears and the remora to
catch fish. The remora is a fish with suction cups on the
back of its head that it uses to cling to larger fish. A cotton
line was tied tightly to the remora’s tail and was gently let
out until the remora attached itself to a fish or turtle. The
remora and its captive were then carefully pulled back to
the canoe. Tainos in Hispanolia blocked rivers to make
fish ponds. In Cuba, the Tainos also made pools on the
seashore where they bred and kept fish and turtles to use
whenever they wished.
•  
 CRAFTSMEN
(Potters, Basket Weavers)
POTTERS - Pottery was made from the
local red, brown and grey clays. The
potter’s wheel was unknown. Pots were
not glazed but were decorated with
markings different for each village. They
were often made in fanciful shapes of
frogs, birds or heads with wide eyes and
large ears to serve as handles.
The most elaborate pots were used as funeral urns for
holding ancestors’ bones or placing food in the grave.
Tools were made from wood, stone, bone and shell.
BASKET-WEAVERS/WEAVERS:
• To make baskets, fish traps and lobster pots, wood
was soaked and split into supple strips.
• The Tainos were excellent basket-weavers. A basket
for carrying water was made by double-weaving
wood and leaves. Their understanding of weaving
also made them skilful weavers of cloth out of
cotton that they collected from bushes on the island.
 • The trunk was hallowed by chipping the
upper side and slowly burning out the
interior.
• The canoe was shaped by wetting the
hollowed trunk and inserting wooden
The Tainos used great skill to make wedges of different lengths to widen it in
dugout canoes without the aid of the middle and slightly taper it at each end.
any metal tools. They first ringed a It was then burned in damp sand to cure
wide silk cotton tree and burned it before being dried in the sun.
off at the base.
Some Taino canoes were large enough to carry 70 or 80 people or a tonne of
trading goods. They made it possible to trade between the settlements on the
islands. Everyday trade goods were cloth, tools, weapons, furniture, tobacco,
fruits.

Taino craftsmen shaped hard stone such as flint and obsidian with great
patience to make tools and weapons. Fishing arrows and spears were tipped
with shell and bone. To make fishhooks, they used turtle shells, which they
cut with a simple saw made by dipping a wetted sisal string in sand
 RELIGIOUS
ORGANIZATION OF THE
TAINOS
Religion played a very important
part in the lives of the Tainos.
The religion of the Tainos was a
mixture of nature worship,
ancestor worship and magic for
protection.
• They believed in a sky-god and an earth-goddess and
they made zemis to represent the forces controlled by
these gods, like rain, wind, hurricanes and fire, or like
fertility in the case of the earth-goddess’s zemi. They also
worshipped their ancestors and made zemis for them,
often out of the bones of these ancestors.
• The Tainos zemis were idols made of many different
material-wood, bone, stone or even cotton and gold- and
were felt to contain the forces of nature or the spirits of
the ancestors.
• The zemis were placed around the person and homes of
the Tainos to ward off evil, sickness and war. Some of
these protective spirits represented fertility while others
gave strength.
• Each family had its own zemi which it highly prized, and
some kept the bones of dead ancestors in a basket to use
as zemis.
 ZEMIS CONTINUED
 The cacique’s zemis were felt to be more powerful than anyone else’s
and this was one way in which he held his power, for the people felt that
the zemis controlled everything- sickness, weather, crops, even peace
and war- and that only the cacique and other priests could speak with
them.
 Even though the ordinary people could not converse with the zemis,
each home had its own zemi in a place of honour on a small table.
• A bowl of snuff (cahoba) or powered tobacco, was placed before it, and
when persons wished to pray, he placed the cahoba on the zemi’s flat-
topped head, and inhaled from it, through his nostrils, from a y-shaped
cane tube. He often rubbed the zemi with cassava, to feed it, for the
Tainos felt that if their zemis were hungry they themselves would fall ill.
• Because they depended on the zemis’ advice before taking important
decisions, the Tainos laid much importance on religious ceremonies.
 TAINOS GODS, BELIEFS AND LEGENDS.

• The Tainos believed in many gods, whom the zemis represented. The most important of these were the God of
the Sky and the Goddess of the Earth, from whom all living things descended.
• The Tainos had a legend to explain the creation of man, which told how in the beginning all humans, and the
sun were kept in a cave and let out only occasionally.
• One day the guardian of the cave forgot to close the opening and they all escaped. The men and women went
to different islands. For his carelessness the guardian was turned into a stone.
• In addition to the gods of sky and earth, the Tainos believed in a god of the moon, which the thought was the
sun’s twin brother.
• They believed in spirits called opia, which belonged to the dead, and who returned at night to try and enter
their bodies. For this reason, they ventured out only at night in groups, and protected themselves by wearing
zemis round their necks or on their forehead.